Jailed Tycoon Plans to Run for Office

Seeking to transform himself from jailed tycoon to political heavyweight, former Yukos Oil Co. Chief Executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced Wednesday that he planned to run for parliament from prison.

By setting his sights on an open seat in Moscow’s University district, one of the most liberal in the country, Khodorkovsky could be a serious contender if he is allowed to run in a by-election expected in December.

But given the legal obstacles likely to derail his candidacy, Khodorkovsky appeared primarily interested in boosting his claim to a leadership position among opponents of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. The businessman’s effort also appeared designed to promote cooperation among anti-Kremlin forces on both the right and left.

Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia’s richest man, was convicted in May of fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement and sentenced to nine years in prison. But his prosecution was widely viewed as a politically motivated attack by the Kremlin on a potentially powerful opponent. He retains a positive image and considerable popularity among many intellectuals, democracy activists and leaders of parties with a pro-Western orientation.

“I have decided to run for the State Duma from Moscow, from the 201st University district of our capital city,” Khodorkovsky said in a statement posted on a website run by supporters.

“What I am battling for,” he said, “is not an entry pass to the deputies’ cafeteria or an office on Okhotny Ryad Street [where parliament is located], but for the right of every resident of Russia to proclaim publicly: The current regime in the Kremlin has outlived itself and its days are numbered.”

Putin’s “disintegrating” government “must be replaced by a new generation of leaders who are concerned not with securing a disgraceful spot at the government trough, but with Russia’s destiny in the third millennium,” Khodorkovsky declared.

He can legally run for the seat in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, as long as his conviction is under appeal. However, it appears likely that his appeals may be exhausted by the election. A Moscow court is due to begin a hearing Sept. 14, and his attorneys have charged that judges are rushing the process to ensure that he cannot be a candidate in December.

Politicians and other public figures from across the political spectrum announced that they had formed a group to back his candidacy. The group includes Irina Khakamada, head of Our Choice movement, who ran against Putin in last year’s presidential contest and is seen as a leading advocate of a Western-style democracy in Russia.

“We have no doubt that Khodorkovsky will win the elections if he is registered as a candidate,” the group said in a statement. “He will be able to work for the good of Russia energetically and effectively when he is released from prison.”

Khakamada said in an interview that it was “not realistic” to expect the tycoon to gain a seat in parliament. But she added that supporting his candidacy would “allow us once again to see the dynamics of our support base,” suggesting that the move was part of an effort to build a broader opposition coalition.

Khodorkovsky has taken steps in recent weeks to draw attention to himself and burnish his political credentials.

In an Aug. 1 article published in the daily Vedomosti, he called for a broad social democratic coalition including Communists and free-market liberals that could bring a democratic left-leaning government to power after Putin’s term expires in 2008.

“A left turn in the fate of Russia is as necessary as it is inevitable,” Khodorkovsky wrote.

A few days later, in an interview with the same newspaper, he predicted that his sentence would be thrown out by Russia’s Supreme Court soon after the 2008 presidential election.

Khodorkovsky also said in the interview he was grateful that since his arrest in 2003 he had received support not only from liberal intellectuals but also from “many people who until recently thought of themselves as my ideological adversaries,” including Communists.

In mid-August, Khodorkovsky drew fresh attention when his lawyers announced that he was engaging in a one-week hunger strike to express solidarity with a convicted co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, who had been placed in solitary confinement for seven days for allegedly violating prison rules.

Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy chairman of the pro-democracy Yabloko party, said that he wished Khodorkovsky success but doubted he would manage to be registered as a candidate.

“It is a very brave but also very reckless move on his part,” Mitrokhin said. “It completely deprives him of any chance to have his sentence softened by the Supreme Court. The state will not hesitate to take its revenge on him now.”

But Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, thought that Khodorkovsky might derive some protection by drawing continued attention and noted that “his arrest and his trial and the fate of his company have already turned him into a politician.”

Shevtsova also predicted that authorities would ensure that Khodorkovsky could not register as a candidate. But even so, she said, his voice “heard from behind bars ... is sending ripples across the stagnated swamp of Russian politics.”

“Khodorkovsky’s statements from prison compel the political blood to move much quicker in the veins of the country’s political body,” she said. “It is making political players in the country react and take their stand.”

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.